Traditional aftermarket On-Board Diagnostics devices (“OBD devices”) may be used to obtain data from an Electronic Control Unit (“ECU”) of a vehicle that is not displayed by the vehicle. Typical OBD devices plug into an existing On-Board Diagnostics connector (“OBD connector”) of the vehicle that is typically found under a dashboard of a vehicle. Due to the increasing popularity of OBD devices, a user may desire to connect two or more OBD devices to the vehicle. However, typically only one OBD connector is provided as part of the vehicle.
To accomplish the physical connection of two OBD devices, a traditional splitter may be utilized that includes one male On-Board Diagnostics connector (“OBD connector”) that is simply spliced to two female OBD connectors. The male OBD connector plugs into an Electronic Control Unit connector (“ECU connector”) in communication with the ECU while the two female OBD connectors receive the OBD devices. However, the traditional splitter merely physically connects the OBD devices to the ECU but lacks the ability to track and route data between the OBD devices and the ECU. As a result, connecting two OBD devices to the ECU using the traditional splitter typically results in errors and data loss while data is being collected from the ECU.
Using the traditional splitter, OBD devices may send a request directly to an Electronic Control Unit gateway (“ECU gateway”) of the ECU. The ECU gateway sends the request to and receives a response from the ECU while the ECU balances processing demands from the vehicle. However, traditional splitters have no ability to track the requests or route the responses, which typically causes the ECU gateway to take more time to process the requests than traditional OBD devices are configured to wait for the response. By the time the ECU gateway sends the request to the ECU, receives the response from the ECU, and sends the response to the OBD devices, each of the OBD devices may have stopped waiting and moved on to its next request. Furthermore, if two OBD devices each send a request to the ECU gateway for different data in quick succession, the responses from the ECU may be unpredictably received by both, one, or neither of the two connected telematics devices, regardless of which of the OBD devices sent the request. Additionally, if a traditional OBD device, while waiting for a requested response, receives an unrelated response associated with another OBD device, this may cause an error in the OBD device or at least cause the OBD device to stop waiting for the requested response. Thus, traditional splitters lack the ability to route responses from the ECU based on the OBD device that sent the request.
There is a need for a smart harness configured to releasably plug into an existing ECU connector of a vehicle and selectively coordinate requests from two or more aftermarket OBD devices with the respective responses from the ECU. It may be desirable for the smart harness to provide power to the two OBD devices from the ECU connector. It may be desirable to provide a smart harness that may be configured to record and route requests and responses between the aftermarket OBD devices and the ECU. The smart harness may be utilized with two or more types of aftermarket OBD devices, such as a telematics device and a diagnostic code reader.